Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 161
October 15, 2016
Links for 2016-10-14 [del.icio.us]
Our #1 Best-Selling Drone--Meet the Dark Night of the Sky!
October 13, 2016
when it all feels like it’s crumbling just a bit
This woman, Jennifer Rothschild, is one of my favourite people on the planet – one of the most empathetic, wisest, most down-to-earth humble women. At the young age of fifteen, Jennifer was diagnosed with a rare, degenerative eye disease that would eventually steal her sight. In the midst of living blind — literally living in an invisible world — Jennifer has taken her message of encouragement, across the country. What is the one power that can barge into the dusty, dormant rooms of your heart, cast open the shades, and flood it with light and hope? That power is love, and once we get a hold of it, it changes everything. In 66 Ways God Loves You, Jennifer clears a brilliant path through each of the 66 books of the Bible and calls out the very specific, very personal ways God expresses His love. By taking this tender, heart-opening journey, you will understand why love is the heartbeat of the Bible’s story and how that love includes you personally. It’s alway a grace to welcome Jennifer to the farm’s front porch…
guest post by Jennifer Rothschild
Life is full of low places – injustice, defeat, abandonment, failure – suffering just flat-out plummets us to the bottom of ourselves and leaves us face down in disappointment.
You know how this feels.
Failed relationships. Divorce. Faded dreams. Discouragement. Forgotten hope. Depression.
I know how it feels too.
I’ve had to stare at the rubble of my own life through blind eyes.
I’ve crawled through the disorienting dark valley of “why God?” and “how long God?” When my eyesight failed, my dreams of becoming an artist faded away.
Blindness stole everything that was most precious to me.
My future was dark; my high hopes were brought low by the albatross of blindness that threatened to sink my future.
What do we do when we live in a low place? How do we lift our eyes when our heart is so heavy?
The prophet Habakkuk was in a low place. Injustice surrounded him. He felt defeated.
So, when he was sinking in the quicksand of despair, he climbed his watchtower, looking for an answer from God. “I will climb up to my watchtower,” he said, “and stand at my guard post. There I will wait to see what the Lord says and how He answers me.” (Habakkuk 2:1)
But, because God loved His prophet perfectly, He didn’t give His prophet the perfect answer that Habakkuk wanted to hear, He gave him something better. He lifted Habakkuk’s spirit and gave him perspective.
When God doesn’t prevent suffering, He gives us perspective on suffering.
Sometimes you just have to get a “God’s-eye” view to see that the master potter is scooping up all the rubble and ruin from your low place to mold and create good in your life. His love reaches down into the dirt – what you may think is utter defeat or hopeless – and lifts you to see that He can turn what you may view as worthless into something worthwhile.
God can take what we think is worthless and turn it into something worthwhile.
Often, when we’re down, all we can see is the valley, the wasteland – we feel like our lives are a mess. But our loving God does not see us and our low places that way. The stuff you think may be just too messy, too ugly, too far gone is the stuff God is infusing with purpose.
The sorrow that hurts you? God fashions it into faith that sustains you.
The sin you’re ashamed of? God uses it to create beautiful humility.
The failures you regret? God turns them into wisdom.
The grief that shattered your heart? God crafts that into unshakeable faith.
The missed opportunities? God uses those to make you reflect His grace.
The loss you never expected? God molds that into strength you can’t explain.
God can make your low place a stepping stone to climb higher with Him.
He can take even the worst things in your life – the injustice, defeat, abandonment or failure – to create the best for you, His beloved child.
That’s what He did for me – and still does – for me.
My blind eyes now see far more than rubble and a dark future. From the top of the watchtower of my faith, I can see how blindness isn’t a waste, it’s part of the work of God for my good. I, like Habakkuk, may not have the answers from God, but, I have a closer relationship with God because of the questions and loss. The perspective he gives me in my low place has helped me see His love more clearly.
Habakkuk had that view too. He said, “Even though the fig trees have no blossoms, and there are no grapes on the vines; even though the olive crop fails, and the fields lie empty and barren… yet I will rejoice in the Lord! I will be joyful in the God of my salvation!” (Habakkuk 3:17-18 NLT)
We can rejoice when our perspective changes even if our problems don’t.
Habakkuk didn’t rejoice because his problems changed; he rejoiced because his perspective changed. God lifted His lowly prophet to “tread on the heights” with Him. (Habakkuk 3:19)
And God will do that for you too. He will love you through your low place. If you find yourself in a low place, don’t assume it’s a waste of time, or a waste of your life or a waste of an opportunity. Instead, do what Habakkuk did – climb the watchtower of your faith, one wobbly step at a time and seek an answer from the God who loves you. If He doesn’t give you an answer – or an answer you want – it’s because He wants to give you something far better – a greater sense of purpose, time in His presence, and a new perspective.
When you climb toward God, you see your life from God’s view.
And, from that place, you may still see rubble, but, you may just rejoice at the sight knowing that God’s loving purpose is right there! “For He works all things together for our good.”
(Romans 8:28)
Jennifer Rothschild has written 13 books and Bible studies, including the bestsellers, Lessons I Learned in the Dark and Self-Talk, Soul-Talk. She has appeared on Good Morning America, Dr. Phil, Life Today, and a Billy Graham television special and spoken for Women of Faith and Extraordinary Women. It’s a grace to be speaking with her next month in Springfield, IL at a Fresh Grounded Faith conference. Jennifer lost her sight at age 15 and regularly travels and speaks around the country, sharing her story and all God has done in her life.
God’s Word is many things – instructive, historical, poetic. Yet to Jennifer Rothschild, the Bible is also an incredible love letter. In 66 Ways God Loves You, she walks you through each of the sixty-six books of the Bible and shows, in concise and thoughtful ways, how every book reflects God’s love for each of us. If you want to experience God’s love through every book of the Bible, check out Jennifer’s new book and experience His love in ways you never expected. This is one really incredible message that can’t be missed. www.66WaysBook.org
[ Our humble thanks to Thomas Nelson for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
October 11, 2016
how we could get to be the kind of people the world needs right now
S o now is when this brokenhearted love story is begging to be told.
If you asked me when it all began?
I would tell you it began before the long wait at the airport last week.
Before they came for dinner last night.
Before the children started calling my Farmer their uncle, before they started hugging his neck for all their worth, eyes dancing like the hope of stars.
I would tell you that it started to unfold when I reached over and squeezed Sozan’s hand in a cold shipping container in Iraq last year, there amongst the pillows and blankets where she laid down with her kids and slept through the nightmares.
Right after Sozan told me that when ISIS descended, slaughtered all the men, she had to run, had to choose which of her children her two arms could carry and how —- and how Sozan’s choice haunted her.
How the face of her little boy lost in the running throngs haunted her like a child begging to be remembered.
It all began right then, lodged in our hearts right then like a holy flame that would not be out until it started a fire that had to have its way with us.
And then that flame surged into an inferno when the little body of Aylan Kurdi washed up on the shores of Greece and we couldn’t turn our faces away from his, lying there in the sand, lifeless.
Who of us could look away, because we all have hearts that bleed when our collective conscience, our collective home of earth, is cut wide open with pain…
The drowning death of Aylan as his family tried to escape war to get to safer shores, his death birthed the throwing of a thousand lifelines, a thousand more, because how could we not?
We picked up ink. Our doing something, one thing, anything, in the face of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis since World War II, began with ink running like a stream across a torrent of forms, the Farmer staying up late at night, long after working in the fields, to fill out more applications.
I worked on adoption papers for a heartbroken baby in China.
The Farmer worked on the sponsoring papers of a refugee family from Syria.
We only get one life here. It’s a crazy, beautiful, liberating thing to realize: We’re not here to help ourselves to more — we’re here to help others to real life.
We’re here to live beyond our base fears because our lives are based in Christ.
We’re here to be more than our fears or our frustrations — we’re here to be more like our Father.
“Because when the Church isn’t for the suffering — the church isn’t for Christ.” ~ The Broken Way
Because that’s good news that will outlast any news cycle: What if when others are striving for power, God’s people sought out those in pain?
What if when others are trying to win races and seats and control, God’s people are losing their lives for His sake, because cross-shaped love wins, living cruciform wins, living broken and given like bread wins us all the greatest feast?
What if we wanted our lives to be more than about believing this —- but were about living this?
A friend offered to rent us a house for a refugee family.
Bible study friends donated bunk beds, a couple from church messaged that they had a line on a couch, a family our kids grew up with, they offered their backyard swing set, my sister made a list of what we all needed to set up a family running from war, running for their lives.
A whole faith community put in hundreds of hours. Brave families of bold faith stepped out of their comfort zones for kids caught in war zones and worked and prayed and laughed too loud together and found comfort like they’d never experienced before.
Sometimes the places where we are stretched thin are the thin places where we catch a greater glimpse of God.
And sometimes a kind of miraculous happens when instead of thinking nothing can be done — you believe there’s always a way one thing can be done.
There’s always find a way to take one step toward someone on the other side of a fence, there’s always a way to take one brick out of a wall that’s divisive, there’s always a way find a way to find Christ’s way to love.
We waited at the airport in Toronto for the arrival of our Syrian family for 3 and a half hours. Pacing. All we had were there names. No photographs. No means of contact. No information really except that there were six of them.
We watched the arrivals like those 10 lamp keepers tending their oil and wicks all night, waiting for His coming — we couldn’t turn away for a moment or we might miss them?
Was the man in the jean jacket holding a little girl’s hand our Syrian father coming through first? Shalom waved our Welcome sign higher, like she held a balloon and welcoming was a way to lift the whole world higher. Was this the mother holding their youngest?
Shalom got down on all fours so that a sign wielding cousin could strain that welcome sign even higher and us parents felt, uh, zero embarrassment at all, really, for the circus that we clearly are.
For hours, we watched every face that stepped through those automatic doors of arrivals…waiting for Him, for however He would come to us, the way “Christ plays in ten thousand places, ten thousand faces.”
In a world where we look around and feel like we’ve all already lost— lost a sense of hope, lost a sense of decency, lost a sense of humanity — stretching our hands in grace and kindness makes everyone win.
And when Zacharias and Fatin walk through those doors — we think it’s them? Maybe? And then they see our sign — stop short. Their family name! The smiles! It’s them! The heart fireworks!
How can you kinda of fall in love with people you’ve just met?
They’ve grabbed each other and escaped a rain of bullets and bombs and a whole world of broken and I’m in awe of their brave.
A family of 6, shy, nervous, with a handful of broken English.
And us all stammering for words that can bridge an ocean of questioning space. Smiling is the dialect of connection — we can all speak it.
You are from?
Google translates on our phones makes our loud, slowly enunciated words into understanding:
And everything kind of runs liquid for me. For Fatin too. Aleppo. And my arms fling open again, open in grief and welcome and ache for a busted world and Fatin steps into that spaces and she squeezes me the tightest.
Come with us —- let’s get you home.
Home? We go —- not to a hotel? We thought — Government give us four days in a hotel. Then we are on our own?
We stop.
Is something being lost in translation?
They flew how many hours across the ocean? To a country that doesn’t speak their language or share their culture, flew to a country where they know absolutely no one, where they have no job, no house, no English and 4 kids who will need breakfast tomorrow morning…
And they thought no one would meet them?
That they got a hotel bed for the 6 of them of 4 nights — and then — flung out to a coming winter? And yet they left the only home they knew?
I look into their eyes and it’s startling clear:
“…no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark…
no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying- leave,
run away from me now
I don’t know what I’ve become
but I know that anywhere
is safer than here…”
And we pull them in safe. “Here —-no hotel, no streets in 4 days…” we pull them in close and whisper —”A whole bunch of us, a tribe of us — we have made a space for you, a new home for you.”
They do not know what to say and we don’t have to — we just let all our eyes run liquid and love and hope flow mingled down.
When we open the door of a completely donated and ‘broken and given’ home that night, stand in the kitchen of the house that a world of kindness made, that being broken and given made, that love that refuses to be destroyed by oceans or wars or fears stood together and made —
Fatin hugs my sister and my mother and I and a whole community who reached out and we are all made in the image of God and He is perfect love and His perfect love kicks fear to the curb.
And this morning, the International Day of the Girl, the Farmer and my mother, they take Zaccharias and Fatin’s 3 daughters to school — and for the very first time in their traumatic lives they will shadow a door of a school.
War destroys more than cities — it destroys generations of dreams and hopes and education and possibility. But those three girls with hope lighting in their eyes? They can be anything now. There is always, always, always hope.
Zaccharias points to my mother —- Your mother? Your mother? I nod. Kind. Help us. Kind. And I nod yes.
“My Mother? My Mother?” he pounds his chest like an aching howl.
He looks me in the eye —- “My Mother back in Syria —- she says she must tell you: Thank you, all the people of this country. Thank you, thank you — my mother says — we all say: Thank you.”
And a story of violence and war and fleeing and destruction — just became a brokenhearted love story of hope and healing and all things being made new — a story being told by his mother in Syria, a story that starts to change the narrative of division and fear in warring parts of the world.
Because this is what begins to change everything the world:
Being broken and given out into a hurting world — begins to break the brokenness in the world.
And mothers all over the world never stop being mothers to their children and all of the children in the world are all of our children and I turn to Zaccharias and say: “Thank you, Thank you…” — because sometimes the greatest gift you can receive is getting to be kind.
Regardless of nationality, of worldviews, of politics, we all belong to each other, we all belong to the family where our faces reflect the image of God and at the end of the day — we have to learn to live with each other, be neighbours with each other, heal with each other.
Fatin’s hand finds mine… and we all gotta keep holding on here.
We gotta hold on and live it:
When the stakes are the highest, kindness matters the most.
When the battle is hardest, God’s people love the greatest, because love is the only force that meets no resistance.
When life looms large — small acts of grace can erupt as the greatest change in another place.
This is worth risking your life on.
Because we may not hold some other answer to the world’s problems… but we hold the light of the world and He is the answer.
He’s in you and makes you a city on a hill so you get to part of the welcoming beacon and answer to the world’s weariness.
He’s in you and makes you the light of the world so your grace, your kindness, you being a cup of light get to part of the answer to the darkness creeping up the edges of things.
It comes like all our brokenhearted hallelujah: Be the bread so broken and given — that a hungry world yearns for more of the taste of such glory.
Our newcomer family — who used to be refugees but have now found refuge in the good news of love — stand at their open door this morning, beckoning us in.
I can’t get over how everywhere love is like a roof and we could all be that to each other and welcome more in.
I can’t over how the little girls’ eyes dance like stars to the rhythm of kindness.
[image error]
Our story of taking The Broken Way and being broken and given:
This one’s for all of us who have felt our hearts break a bit…
This one’s for the brave and the busted and the real and dreamers and the sufferers and the believers.
This one’s for those who dare to take The Broken Way… into abundance
In a hurting & brokenhearted world: The GIFT List: Give It Forward Today
Dare with us? To start a bit of a kindness revolution, a giving, generous, caring, broken and given and transforming revolution?
A list of Giving It Forward Today… Could there be a more beautiful way to live a life? A daring path to the abundant life!
Download Your G.I.F.T list here & take the dare to beautiful life
Links for 2016-10-10 [del.icio.us]
Our #1 Best-Selling Drone--Meet the Dark Night of the Sky!
October 8, 2016
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [10.08.16]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
Some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate today! Links & stories this week 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything — and that there’s love everywhere & for ((you))!
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you right here:
Esther Havens
Esther Havens
Esther Havens
I can never get enough of the extraordinary that she shares, again and again
a Chicken Sonata, just for you
because we all need to be rescued
some tips that maybe you wish you would have known sooner?
yes! A Fall Home Tour: Cozy Minimalist Style
just — wow!
The GIFT List: Give It Forward Today:
Dare with us? To start a bit of a kindness revolution, a giving, generous, caring, broken and given and transforming revolution?
A 365 day GIFT list, a list of Giving It Forward Today… Could there be a more beautiful way to live a life? A daring path to the abundant life!
Simply fill in your email here and the whole library of free printables and tools unfolds right before you:
Sign-in/Subscribe here for immediate access to the whole library of free printables, framables & free tools!
Quiet Relief Near-Daily Quiet Relief in one Weekend BundleSIGN-IN »
Team rallies around boy: who was never supposed to even walk
“I know God delights in disclosing to me His will for me, and in that—in HIM—I place all my hope.”
jumping into the clouds: you may want to hold on for this one!
a most extraordinary story of forgiveness
a new local hero: he saddled up and saved the day
Meg Loeks
Meg Loeks
Meg Loeks
just too beautiful not to share
‘ANNO DOMINI’ Fall IF:EQUIP Study: Oct 17
Have you ever wondered what happened after the Bible ended? How did the church get from Acts to today? IF:Equip has created an eight week study on the history of the early church, and it’s the first volume in a series of studies on the church we are calling: Anno Domini.
We’ll look at the first 500 years of the Church. It’s a study unlike anything you’ve done before and we promise it will stretch and encourage you. You won’t want to miss this! Please click here for more info. We’d love to have you!
we could do this too!
Are you a working mama who feels stretched too thin?
These free videos featuring Jessica Turner, Angie Smith and others about the tensions working moms face in their relationships are a must-watch. Get immediate access this weekend only to this insightful and encouraging series.
This Thursday, we will be coming together #QCommons : a global discussion on justice, race, politics and how we can live in unity in the middle of divisive times.
It’s their largest event ever and couldn’t come at a more crucial time in our nation. This two-hour simulcast will be a unifying moment for the American church with over 150 locations and over 20,000 people participating. The night features 9 and 18 minute talks by Dr. Ravi Zacharias (Apologist), Lecrae (Hip-Hop Artist), Ross Douthat (The New York Times), Kirsten Powers (CNN and USA Today), Annie Downs (Author), Jeremy Cowart (Purpose Hotel) and Chuck Mingo (Pastor) and Darren Whitehead (Pastor), concluding with a time of prayer for our country.
Please consider joining in on this national simulcast event: Thursday, Oct 13, 7-9pm.
Healing the lonely in you and me…
5 years. 27 trips. 13,000 toys. A good man with a big brave heart.
how to definitely know the real reason & purpose of your life:
why you’ve been called to where you are
praying for those in the storm’s path…
A humbling grace to be visiting a bit with Church of the Queensway on November 8
it would be a grace to meet you here!
Utah’s homeless experiment: giving people homes. And yes! It worked.
Post of the Week from these parts here
then there was a handful of light: about scars & shame & being brave
so much good here: please don’t miss this one
love really does conquer all
This is the story of Chris Shepherd, who lost his wife, Liz, to cancer last year. Instead of following the medical community’s urging to abort and begin treatment immediately, Liz chose to give their daughter LIFE. If you’ve ever wondered if choosing LIFE is a worthwhile choice in the midst of heartache and trials…please pause and watch this?
If We’re Honest
“…so bring your brokenness and I’ll bring mine
’cause love can heal what hurt divides
and mercy’s waiting on the other side…”
…maybe on the days we want out of our lives — it isn’t so much that we want to die from shame, but hide from shame. But let’s remember: shame gets unspeakable power only if it’s unspeakable. Shame dies when stories are told in safe places.
You know what? Your scars are proof that you’re a kind of bulletproof — because living through the hardest battles proves you can live through any battle. You can trace those scars and let it feed your courage and feel no shame for the wars you’ve come through, no shame for any of your broken.
And tonight we’re just going to take heart — take His heart
and pour a brave and willing love like His
over all the open wounds…
that we may even now
take hope.
[excerpted from our little Facebook community … come join us each day?]
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
October 7, 2016
for your weekend: when wasting time is the most productive thing you can do
Time is a relentless river. It rages on, a respecter of no one. Shelly Miller shows us how to slow the torrent by fully living in the moment. On a walk at dusk she discovers when time slows, God’s voice is clear. Answers for questions about loneliness and belonging come quickly through one simple but curious word: Sabbath. As a pastor’s wife, London expat, and mom of two adult kids, she knows what it means to get lost in the current and how wasting time can be a life raft. Today, Shelly guides us in finding our unique rhythms of rest. It’s a grace to welcome Shelly to the farm’s front porch today…
guest post and photos by Shelly Miller
The hems of my soggy pants brush my ankles, sending chills up my spine.
Grass confetti sticks like static electricity to my shoes with each step.
I stop and stare at the horizon; my hand covers my squinting eyes, an awning shielding the brightness.
I’ve memorized this moment for eleven months, breathless with the reality. Captivated by simple beauty, I sit down and mentally retrace the familiar lines of the landscape.
Water gently laps on the shoreline, the sun illuminating the lake like a flash mob of photographers.
Children’s voices and the hum of a boat echo from miles across; the blue cloudless sky meets inky indigo water. A bird trills from two houses beyond, breaking my trance, diverting my attention toward the beach strewn with sand toys, water skis, and crumpled beach towels.
I hear myself exhale. And think.
In a culture of busyness, most of us live in the tension of unresolved solutions for continual cycles of chronic tiredness. We know we need rest but struggle to find margins.
In this familiar place at our family cottage in Canada, the clock is no longer a bully but a favor. With years of practice, I’ve learned that vacation is a change in mindset cultivated by the inspiration of new geography.
The choice of rest is a kindness to your inner self that is desperate for conversation about calling.
“What do you want me to do for you?”
It’s a question Jesus asks his disciples James and John, and the same one he asks of Bartimaeus, a blind man sitting on the side of the road.
It’s straightforward; it’s simple, isn’t it? It’s obvious how a blind man would answer that question, but Jesus wants to hear him say it with specificity and without reservation.
He’s asking you and me the same question when it comes to making rest a rhythm. How will you answer?
His question brings opportunity for digging deeper, answering with vulnerability, wrestling between truth and fiction, and choosing trust over self-protection. And like a father asking his children, God wants us to tell Him what we want. Instead, we slump our shoulders in ambivalence.
I want the legacy of a well-lived life, don’t you?
I’m learning to say what I want with greater clarity and definition, even when it feels uncomfortable and presumptuous, because I don’t want a mediocre life as a result of vague prayers and ill-defined faith.
When you are tired, depleted, worn out, and weary, imagine Jesus asking, “What do you want me to do for you?”
When we are tired, coming up with an answer to that question seems monumental, doesn’t it? Even rest is a vague answer—an answer that leads to vague results.
This question, “What do you want me to do for you?” is at the heart of making rhythms of rest a true reality.
In the same way, you and I are intentional about what we are going to eat for dinner, graphic when teaching our children how to dress, detailed about decorating our homes, and defined about our roles in the family.
When it comes to rest, Jesus wants you and me to tell Him with specificity what we want. Truth is not trite; it has texture and tenacity to it.
We embrace intentions for work, academics, relationships, finances, recreation, and faith, but what about intentions for rest?
Most of us don’t spend time thinking about how a day of rest might look in a busy week.
We don’t dare to dream about rest outside of paid vacation time because a whole day for resting seems unrealistic, so out of reach that pondering the possibility seems futile. As a result, we block out the possibility of rest altogether.
Rest is ill-defined when we value time and our worth based on productivity.
If we are created with intention by God for a specific purpose, and the way to discover that purpose is through relationship with him, then one way to discover what we are missing in life is through abiding with him on Sabbath.
A lack of intentionality when it comes to how we rest leads to a depleted life defined by what the world dictates. When we are overtired and dreading the alarm clock, we may miss out on hints toward happiness God has for us. “Wasting time” is actually the most productive action you may take this week.
Back at the cottage, I stand beside an overturned red canoe propped against a large tree trunk, frozen while looking through the lens of my camera in wonder and thankfulness.
Framing life’s circumstances through the lens of Sabbath is a reorientation, a quieting of inner dialogue with an outcome of broad perspective, different from a routine quiet time or leisure activity.
Waiting for Jesus to come,
to define purpose in the midst of circumstances that don’t make sense,
ultimately determines the path we take.
Shelly Miller is a veteran ministry leader and sought-after mentor on Sabbath-keeping. She leads the Sabbath Society, an online community of people who want to make rest a priority, and her writing has been featured in multiple national publications.
Her first book, Rhythms of Rest: Finding the Spirit of Sabbath in a Busy World, Shelly dispels legalistic ideas about Sabbath, showing you how times of rest—whether for an hour, a morning, or a whole day—can change your perspective on how you approach life. With encouraging stories from people in different stages of life, you will glean simple ways to be intentional about making times of rest doable. You are unique, and the way you rest is unique to you too. And I so agree with Shelly when she says, “Sabbath is not about resting perfectly but resting in the One who is perfect.” This book is a helpful tool for every single one of us.
[ Our humble thanks to Bethany House for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
Links for 2016-10-06 [del.icio.us]
Our #1 Best-Selling Drone--Meet the Dark Night of the Sky!
October 6, 2016
how to definitely know the real reason & purpose of your life: why you’ve been called to where you are
If you only knew what fire every person is facing, there isn’t one fire you wouldn’t help fight with the heat of a greater love.
The day the homeless man moved into our loft, a heat wave broke over us.
Gordon literally had nothing the day he showed up, nothing to his name but the sun-faded T-shirt sticking to his back, emblazoned with the words, “Normal people scare me.”
A mingling of alcohol and tobacco seeps from his burning pores.
My brother and a buddy, they’d found him wandering down an empty back road after a court date, the tongues of his boots panting open, longing for relief. Now he stands in the shade at our back door, asking for water.
“You got anything to drink?” he asks me.
My brother wonders if we have some work for Gordon. Wondered if we may have a place for him, and maybe—just to start—a glass of water?
Gordon uses the tattered edge of his T-shirt to mop this mask of sweat puddling in the etched lines of his face.
A silver cross hangs around his neck on this heavy chain.
Before I even think, I touch my wrist to find the small black cross I penned first thing this morning.
We both have our crosses. We all have our crosses.
“To be a follower of the Crucified means, sooner or later, a personal encounter with the cross. And the cross always entails loss,” writes Elisabeth Elliot.
The sun’s losing light as it edges across the floor. I can feel the world tilting a bit, its truth slipping right out and onto the floor between Gordon and me:
Why do we rush to defend God to a broken world, and not race to defend the image of God in the world’s broken?
Gordon’s eyes search mine. The light’s caught in his hair. Yeah, I’ve got no idea if he’s packing something, dealing something, trafficking something, but something holy’s caught in my throat.
We’ve all got our crosses.
Maybe the struggle for good isn’t waged as much around us as it’s waged inside of us.
I could get Gordon a glass of water.
Could I offer him a place to stay?
Why in the world do we spend more time defending God to the critical around us— than defending God to the doubting, critical voices within us?
What if it is not God who needs us to rush to His defense in the world as much as we need to rush to the distress of the broken who carry the image of God into the world?
Come visit me over here at Christianity Today for the rest of this excerpt from The Broken Way
In a hurting & brokenhearted world of crosses —
have you dared with us to have the best GIFT List: Give It Forward Today:
Dare with us? To start a bit of a kindness revolution, a giving, generous, caring, broken and given and transforming revolution?
A 365 day GIFT list, a list of Giving It Forward Today… Could there be a more beautiful way to live a life? A daring path to the abundant life!
Download Your G.I.F.T list here & take the dare to beautiful life
Our story of taking the dare to the abundant life, of being broken and given:
This one’s for those who dare to take The Broken Way… into abundance
#TheBrokenWay #beTheGIFT
October 5, 2016
in an angry, debating, broken world, we could join hands in a revolution of kindness: the best GIFT List
Maybe days like these days make it necessary — for us all to be little kinder than necessary?
Maybe there are times when private independent acts become more important every day — because there are public actions that are breaking all of us every day.
That’s exactly what Jamie-Lynne Knighten found out when she stood at the checkout aisle of Trader Joe’s with a baby slung on her hip and couldn’t find even a dime in her purse.
She needed an even $200 for the bill and her cart of groceries.
Her debit card was at home. Her credit card was declined. Her phone was somewhere at the bottom of her purse. She had to call the bank. And the baby had to be howling in her ear like some distraught coyote caught in some relentless trap.
Matthew Jackson stepped out of the growing, waiting line and into the baby’s howl and Jamie-Lynn’s frantic search for her phone.
“Let me cover it.”
Let me cover it, was all the guy said. You know — let the shortcomings be covered with long kindnesses, let the messiness of things be covered with amazing grace, let the multitude of problems be covered with an avalanche of love.
Jamie-Lynn refused.
Why can it be the hardest to let yourself be the least bit loved?
Matthews insisted. “Please — let me cover it.”
Who doesn’t want to be covered? Who doesn’t need people to make themselves into a roof for our storms? When we cover each other with caring — we destroy the crisis.
Jamie-Lynn would say she looked up and she’d say could see it in Matthew Jackson’s eyes. He meant it. The kid meant it.
“Look, you don’t have to pay me back.” Matthew Jackson pulled out his wallet. “Just give it forward.”
Truth is: We can’t pay the cosmos back — we can only give it forward. And this is the same thing.
Maybe our most convincing, persuasive argument for how we envision the cultural landscape of tomorrow — is mostly our profound kindness today.
Sometimes when it gets mighty hard to find solutions to the headlines… turns out that lines of hope and change are found in hearts.
Sometimes —- there are times, in the face of no easy solutions, we get to restore each other to the strength of unlikely revolutions.
Yes, Jamie-Lynn said, yes, she said — she would give it forward —- and she scribbled down Matthew Jackson’s name and where he worked — so she could thank him again. Somehow.
A week later, Jamie-Lynn picked up the phone and rung up Matthew’s boss because she had to tell him what the kid had done.
Could she stop by to somehow thank Matthew — some kind of gift of thanks?
This time it was the cry of Matthew’s boss that broke and shattered at Jamie-Lynn’s ear.
“You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Less than 24 hours after Matthew had stood in that same Trader Joe’s and paid Jamie-Lynn’s bill, his car wrapped around a tree and his heart slammed to a deafening stop.
But Matthew Jackson didn’t die when he struck that tree because this is how the universe works:
Give love and you always stay alive, even after you are gone.
Each act of kindness is a revolutionary act that turns time and distance on its head. Because kindness multiplies each time it’s shared, grows until it becomes a blazing act of heroic courage, much later and far away.
“I still cannot believe it.” Jamie-Lynne would stammer afterward. “I thought for sure I would get the chance to see him again, give him a hug and thank him at least once more in person. Now I won’t get that chance…. And that breaks my heart.”
But nothing could stop her from keeping her promise to him to give his grace forward.
People! All the beautiful, glorious people, from one small town, and from one back road, and from one side of this spinning world to the other, giving it forward!
Driving cancer patients to the hospital and donating blood and reading to kids down at the library and having a coffee ready for the mailman and handing out flowers at the gas station and buying the milk for the lady in checkout line. All the people giving forward, the act of kindness that Matthew Jackson began.
And the thing is? Small things can change everything. Doing the smallest thing, even when we feel like we have nothing to give, can begin to change everything. Every one of us can start changing headlines when we start reaching out our hands.
“In Scotland, in Wisconsin, in Australia. Overwhelming. It was overwhelming,” Jamie-Lynn awed.
Extending himself into community, into a kind of communion, is exactly the kind of person Matthew Jackson’s had always been.
When Matt was a kid? They’d stopped once under a sweltering hot Phoenix sun to get a dripping cold bottle of water. But only one stoplight later? Matthew had flung himself out of the car, straight toward a panholder, thrusting his still-sealed water bottle into the stunned stranger’s hand.
“I knew my boy was like this,” Matthew Jackson’s mother would say. “He would be happy to know that other people are taking up his example.”
I had sat with that. Who’s example are we taking up?
Be so intimate with Christ, your life could be imitated.
I had sat with this:
Matthew’s sister left Phoenix and drove across the country to Matthew’s funeral.
Down some endlessly stretching highway, her and her husband and their 4 kids, Matthew’s people, stumbled into a restaurant for something to take the edge off the hunger, the edge off the grief.
When Matthew’s sister grabbed her purse, got up to the till like Jamie-Lynn had less than a week earlier, Matthew’s heartbroken sister didn’t even get a chance to reach in her purse to grab her card and pay her bill. Because her bill?
Paid in full.
Someone on their way through — had given it forward.
Some stranger, taking the broken and given way, chose to be a GIFTer, to Give It Forward Today. Don’t doubt that there are angels. Don’t doubt He could make you like one.
Love only grows in the world when we all share our love. Love only grows by giving, by being broken and given like bread. We all only get more of the lives we want by giving away bits of the lives and love we have.
The world may get divisive — but what changes the world is when we divide and share and give away amazing grace.
The world may get divisive and our hands may feel empty to do anything — but our hearts can always be full of love and this is what begins to change everything.
The world may get divisive — but this is the moment when we could divide and share all the love in our heart — the grace of holding open a door, of nodding a kind smile, a willing patience that let’s someone go ahead, of giving it forward today in the smallest ways —- even when, especially when, you feel like you have nothing to give.
Giving isn’t about what you have in your hands — it’s what you have in your heart.
And never doubt it:
An act of kindness, giving it forward, can be more powerful than a sword in starting needed revolutions.
True, people may be angry,
Give them love anyway.
People may not like your way,
Give them kindness anyway.
People may be divisive,
Give them dignity anyway.
People may be indifferent,
Give them genuine attention anyway.
People may build fences,
Give them a gate anyway.
People may disagree with you,
Give them space at the table anyway.
People may climb over each other to get ahead
Give them a bit of your heart anyway.
Because honestly?
Giving kindness is how to give sight and hearing to those who hearts may be blind and deaf.
It could happen —-
That the love gifts you send out into the world change the very atmosphere of the world, your acts of giving it forward, of choosing to #beTheGift, reorganizing the atoms of the universe into a love story that runs on without end, changing times and history and how many stories.
When Matthew’s people got back into that car and turned back out on to the road rolling west — the Way ahead of them blazed like the landscape of everything could fill with a kind of glorious light.
In an arguing, debating hurting & brokenhearted world:
The GIFT List: Give It Forward Today:Dare with us? To start a bit of a kindness revolution, a giving, generous, caring, broken and given and transforming revolution?
A 365 day GIFT list, a list of Giving It Forward Today… Could there be a more beautiful way to live a life? A daring path to the abundant life!
Download Your G.I.F.T list here & take the dare to beautiful life
Our story of taking the dare to the abundant life, of being broken and given:
This one’s for those who dare to take The Broken Way… into abundance
#TheBrokenWay #beTheGIFT
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